


We too have lived in Arcadia

by lindmere



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Bondage, Card Games, M/M, Mirror Universe, Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-14
Updated: 2012-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-29 11:57:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/319656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindmere/pseuds/lindmere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the Mirror Universe, everyone knows Kirk belongs to Pike...until Pike gives Bones the opportunity to "win" him for himself. Written for the prompt FOR KEEPS, part of the "Sweethearts" challenge at <a href="http://jim_and_bones.livejournal.com">Jim & Bones</a></p><p>A milder version of the MU than some, but still: onscreen K/M sex, language, violence, bondage, and implied D/s; offscreen torture, child abuse, and death of a secondary character. But with a happy ending--really!</p>
            </blockquote>





	We too have lived in Arcadia

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for beta reading to the wonderful and generous [sangueuk](/users/sangueuk).

“Do you want to die fast, or die slow?” McCoy asks, brandishing a hypo over the prone form of Ensign Bayar.

“Neither,” Bayar gasps, clutching his bad arm with his good one and struggling to get out of the biobed.

“Hey, hey!” McCoy grabs him by the shoulders and presses him back down. “I’m  _kidding_. For God’s sake, Bayar, you should know that by now. It’s just a simple regen job; it’ll take 20 minutes.”

“Yeah, okay, Doc.” Bayar settles down and doesn’t squeak when McCoy releases the hypo of anetrizine into his neck. He doesn’t really need to be knocked out for this, but he’s excitable and has plenty to worry about without watching McCoy stitch his skin back together.

Bayar is a klutz and an underachiever who’s in Sickbay twice a month at least, but he’s outdone himself this time, precipitating an accident that depressurized the shuttle bay just in time for Admiral Pike’s arrival. The sight of one of the Fleet’s most feared commanders gasping like a fish and diving back into his shuttle is one that’s Pike’s likely to try to purge from memory by sending Bayar on a long trip to the Agony Booth. It’s a measure of McCoy’s very moderate influence that he’s being allowed to patch up Bayar before instead of after.

“Do you think we’ll be seeing the Admiral?” Chapel asks, handing him the protoplaser.

“Doubt it.” Any attention to Medical from Fleet higher-ups is usually the negative kind; McCoy is happy to be ignored and have his minor medals and paltry bonus waiting for him during brief trips home. “There’s a senior staff dinner tomorrow night, that’s about it. Mostly, I think he has business with the Captain.”

A second later the door whisks open and the Admiral himself enters, blazing scarlet and bronze and flanked by no fewer than four Imperial Guards.

“Doctor McCoy.” The Admiral gives him a brief nod, and then points to the biobed. “Is that the man who caused the accident?”

“Ensign Bayar--yes, sir.”

“Wake him up.”

“But, Admiral--” a glance at Pike’s eyes halts any further objection. Just like that, McCoy is skidding into mortal peril territory. “Chapel, 3 ccs of cordrazine.”

She hands it to him like they’re defusing a bomb, and Bayar comes to groggy consciousness to see Admiral Pike inches from his face.

“Ensign, you’re the reason I had a very bad afternoon.” The Admiral’s face is open, pleasant, and McCoy realizes he’s in a whole different class of scary-ass motherfuckers from the blustering threat junkies who make up most of Fleet command. “Would you care to apologize before you die?”

“Don’t sir,” Bayar blubbers. “Please, don’t--”

“That’s not an apology.” Pike’s voice is patient. “Try again.”

“I’m sorry I inconvenienced you, sir, it’ll never--”

“That’s better.” Pike takes five steps back and gestures for McCoy and Chapel to do the same. McCoy’s thoughts of intervening only last a second; Bayar’s had a target on his back from the day his parents bought his way onto the Fleet’s flagship, or at least the day the credits were spent.

Pike pulls out his phaser and shoots Bayar in the chest, disinterested and efficient as if he’s swatting a fly.

“There, I’ve saved you some work, Doctor,” he says, holstering the phaser, as Bayar drops back onto the bed with a terminal  _whuf_  of air. “Maybe you could use the spare time to join me for a drink. Does 1800 hours work for you? My quarters.”

McCoy thinks the end of never would work better, but what can he say? “It’ll, uh, be my honor, Admiral.”

“Yeah,” Pike says, blue eyes twinkling at what prospect McCoy hates to think. “Mine, too.”

+++++

The VIP guest quarters on the  _Enterprise_  are lavish to the edge of being obscene and heavily decorated with very large, very bored Imperial Guards who make the most of the opportunity to scan, bio-identify, and eventually frisk McCoy. After plenty of all three, McCoy is ushered into the presence of Admiral Pike, who's sitting at his ease in a very big chair holding a very small cup of coffee.

"Doctor," he says, raising the cup to his lips without taking his eyes off McCoy. "You're three minutes late."

"I'm sorry, sir," McCoy says, trying to keep his posture relaxed even though his heart started hammering the second he looked into those pale eyes. "Your guards are very--thorough.”

"They're pigs," Pike says brightly, topping off his coffee and adding sugar with a tiny silver spoon. "But they know how to assess a threat." He waves a generous host’s hand. "Fix yourself a drink.”

Pike's bar is like the Empire in miniature: the nectar squeezed from a thousand subject planets for the pleasure of the powerful. There's Napoleon brandy and Kagari whiskey and Halkan silverwine, and McCoy would be happy for a shot of any of them or all of them mixed together, but he needs to keep his wits about him. He mixes a vodka and soda and settles for imagining the offense Chekov would take if he saw it.

He sits down in an ornate chair opposite Pike and tries not to gulp his drink, though his mouth feels dry as a desert.

“Sorry about that business earlier, in Sickbay,” Pike says with a vague gesture, as if he’s referring to a spilled drink instead of a dead man. “You understand that it wasn’t about my personal inconvenience, yes? It’s not even about the chain of command. It’s about order. And Bayar--” Pike gives a little chuckle. “He was an agent of chaos if I ever saw one.”

McCoy may joke about death with the living, but he doesn’t like jokes about the dead, so he keeps quiet and racks his brain to think why Pike would be sharing his thoughts, his vodka, or anything else with a lowly CMO.

“It’s good to be back on the  _Enterprise_ ,” Pike continues. “I haven’t been on board her on active duty since--well, you know.” McCoy does, and it appears that Pike isn’t any happier with the memory than he is. Pike keeps his head bowed in thought for a moment, and then reaches for the delicate china sugar bowl and stirs more into his coffee. The clinking sets McCoy’s teeth on edge.

“Well,” Pike says, face clearing. “How are you, Doctor? Anything of interest happen to you on this mission?”

McCoy tenses a little at the change in subject, trying to force himself to think of conquered planets, silent fiery battles, weird alien creatures and odder humans. But only one thing leaps vividly to his mind. He flushes and mentally curses his too-revealing face.

“Well, nothing that hasn’t been in the reports, sir,” he says, forcing himself to meet Pike’s eyes.

“Nothing?” Pike sets his cup down with a brittle clank that makes McCoy jump and leans forward, clasping his hands. “Either you have a bad memory, Dr. McCoy, or you’re hard to impress. Because I really would have thought you’d remember having Jim Kirk’s cock in your mouth.”

The floor tilts away in front of McCoy, and he has just the presence of mind to put his drink down before it ends up in his lap. He does a quick calculation of Pike’s current political capital weighed against Kirk’s, of his own value to either one. The results aren’t promising; Kirk is still the Fleet’s favorite attack dog, but rumor has Pike as its next Grand Admiral.

“Yes, sir,” he finally manages, through a cough. “I remember that.”

“I bet you do,” Pike says, and his smile is tighter, sharper. “That was the first time, but not the beginning, was it?”

“No, sir,” McCoy breaths.

“Good. I’m glad your memory isn’t faulty after all; I know ways to jog it that you wouldn’t like. But this is exactly what I want to talk about, McCoy. Don’t worry,” he adds, probably seeing the veiled panic on McCoy’s face. “I really just do want to talk. For now.” He picks up McCoy’s glass and hands it to him. “I know everything important already, of course, but I’d like to hear it from you.” He smiles easily again. “I find a different perspective can sometimes be useful. You know, in making decisions.”

McCoy pulls an old-fashioned handkerchief from his pocket and wipes his face. He thinks with longing of a time he didn’t know Kirk, or Pike, or what kind of temptation the universe contained.

++++

“McCoy! Arm phasers and-- _shit_!”

The last thing McCoy sees before G forces threaten to suck his breakfast out through his eyeballs is the nose of another fighter meters from his face.

Qazi is practically sitting on her sidestick, forcing their fighter to bank away into open space with a tooth-rattling shudder. By the time McCoy sees stars--real ones, not the hallucinatory kind--he’s got vomit on his boots, a tear in his flightsuit, and a couple of what will surely be spectacular bruises, but he’s alive.

“Fucking  _maniac_ ,” Qazi spits. “We’re not supposed to get within 200 meters of other fighters. These old rustbuckets can’t maneuver worth shit, and that guy was practically up my colon. I fucking hate these grandstanding asswipes who have to win every fucking exercise.”

McCoy couldn’t agree more. He has a single goal for combat drills, which is to stay alive--the main reason he tries to get paired with Qazi, since she’s nominally less suicidal than the other first-year pilot wannabees. As a rule, McCoy keeps his mouth shut and his eyes on the console and lets Qazi do her thing. It’s been working well enough that McCoy can’t think enough bad things about the hotshot who nearly got them killed. As it is, only a quarter of the Imperial Academy’s entering class make it to graduation, and of the available options--accidental death, execution, desertion, and service in the galaxy’s greatest and most despotic military force--a training accident is the second least attractive.

A half hour later, the fighter is on the ground and Qazi and McCoy are unbuckling and trying to get their Earth legs back.

“What do you think? Jump that guy now, or later?” Qazi says.

“Why wait? Now’s good.” McCoy curls his fingers into his sweaty palms and anticipates offloading some adrenaline.

They find the hotshot’s craft by its tail design, a bunch of green slashes and the name  _Anaconda_ , which as far as McCoy’s concerned is what the its pilot can shove up his ass.

The pilot’s standing in the middle of a gaggle of admiring cadets, and the drill instructor is handing him the day’s Double Eagle coin, which makes McCoy even madder. The Double Eagle can get you out of an exam or a drill or an agonizer session and has an astronomical value on the cadet black market, and McCoy’s held one in his hand exactly twice, both times because of Qazi and neither of which she let him keep.

As McCoy waits for the sycophantic little crowd to drift away he sizes up the pilot, a human of McCoy’s height and about half of his circumference. He’s blond and blue eyed and has good teeth, a pretty face, and a way of carrying himself that says  _richer than the Emperor_  or  _somebody’s pet_  or both.

McCoy doesn’t care. As soon as the pilot’s alone except for a few buddies, McCoy strides up to him. The pilot smirks, shifting his weight to one hip like he’s posing for a holo and waiting for McCoy’s admiration.

Instead, he gets a sock in the jaw that knocks him on his ass.

It’s then that McCoy notices that Qazi has vanished. The pilot’s buddies step forward to grab McCoy’s arms, and the pilot rises slowly to his feet, wiping blood and saliva from the corner of his mouth. McCoy’s pinned and the guy’s conscious and can do whatever he wants, but McCoy, stubborn bastard that he is, is going to make his point or die in the attempt, probably both.

“You son of a  _bitch_. You damn near got us killed up there,  _all_  of us. And you got rewarded for it--how precious. Is it mummy and daddy’s money, or are you going to go bend over for the drill instructor now?”

The pilot’s amused expression doesn’t change. He gets up in McCoy’s space, cups McCoy’s chin, and lets grey-ringed irises scan back and forth over McCoy’s face.

“What a mouth,” he says softly. Then, stepping back, “You were in the  _Hila_ , weren’t you? But you’re not the pilot; you don’t look like you could drive a Go Kart. What are you, an engineer? An administrative puke?”

“A doctor.” That makes the cronies holding McCoy crack up, but the pilot just raises an eyebrow.

“Doctor, huh?” The man is practically on top of him now; McCoy can feel the brush of his flightsuit, catches a clean whiff of soap and sweat. “Then tell your pilot that when someone tries a head-on attack in a Reptilia class fighter, a displacement roll is the worst possible defense because you can’t fire aft thrusters until you’re out of the turn.”

McCoy nods slowly, as if he’s following all this jargon but is skeptical. It’s weird, because the pilot is acting more like the Academy instructors would--if they actually cared about teaching--and less like a guy who’s about to knee him in the groin and drop him to pavement.

“So you’re going to end up in front of your attacker,” the pilot continues, pantomiming the maneuver with long, slim hands, “and probably with a torpedo up your exhaust, which is what would have happened except the goal of the exercise was to  _take out the starship_  not blow up doctors. Lucky you.”

“Yeah, well,” McCoy says, clinging to his anger because at the moment, it’s all he’s got. “You broke the rules.”

The grin drops off the pilot’s face. “The first rule of combat,” he says in a voice that’s deep and husky and still oddly adolescent, “is that there are no rules.” He reaches toward McCoy’s heart and McCoy tries not to flinch, but the pilot just fingers his ident card. “Coincidentally, also the first rule of life, Dr. McCoy.”

McCoy nods, conceding the truth of the sentiment while he waits for the cold steel of a dagger in his gut. Instead, the pilot nods in turn. A faint smile appears on his wide mouth, and he gestures to his buddies to let McCoy go.

“You know, Doctor, you’ve been the highlight of an otherwise boring and routine day. Tell you what--I’ll buy you a drink to make up for scaring the shit out of you. Kolshari’s at 2200--ask for Kirk’s table.”

The shiny pilot and his gang move off, leaving McCoy with confused feelings and a strange tightness in his groin. He wouldn’t be the first to react to proximity to death that way, but right now he isn’t thinking of death at all.

McCoy finds Qazi in the locker room, giving her boots a lazy polish. She stares up at him in frank surprise at his continued existence.

“Gee, Qazi, thanks for your support. That worked so well with us as a team.”

She gives him a nervous look disguised as a sneer. “ _Please_ , McCoy. It was  _Kirk_. Only an idiot would go after that guy, which means you, not me.”

“Who is he?” McCoy asks, blocking her egress out the door. “Some First Families kid trying to put the gloss on a commission?”

Now Qazi rolls her eyes and relaxes. “You really are the dumbest hick ever, McCoy.  _Kirk_. As in George Kirk. Ring a bell? Sacrified the  _Kelvin_  to save his pregnant wife? Wife was executed an hour after she gave birth?”

“Oh, the  _Narada_ thing. Of course I know about that.” It’s one of those  _don’t-fuck-with-the-Empire_  stories every kid hears. “But the baby--oh.” The baby, of course, would now be a man of 22 or so, assuming he’d been allowed to live.

“Yeah, ‘oh,’” Qazi says, spitting a final time on her boot and getting to her feet. “For his parents’ crimes, he was condemned to a life of service to the Empire. And he was making a good start of it, too, in the beryllium mine on Argalon Seven.” McCoy flinches in spite of himself; hard slave labor is one of the few things a full citizen of the Empire is guaranteed to avoid in a short and miserable life.

“So how did he end up at the Academy?”

“Captain Pike pulled him out. Bought his freedom at the age of 14. Bought  _him_ , if you believe the stories, even though Imperial citizens aren’t supposed to be for sale. Pike wanted a protege, someone who’d be completely loyal to him.” Qazi looks mystified by the concept of  _loyalty_ , which in the Imperial Fleet is abstract and theoretical at best. “ _That’s_  the guy you punched, McCoy. What did you do to stop him from killing you? Suck his cock? Offer him your meager worldly possessions?”

“Nothing,” McCoy shrugs. “He asked me out to some bar for a drink.”

Qazi feigns collapsing from sarcastic laughter. “Right, a  _drink_. He’s either going to fuck you blind or kill you dead, and either way it’ll be slow and painful. Too bad,” she says, and gives him a pat on the ass as she heads out the door. “Looks like I’m going to need a new co-pilot.”

+++++

Pike’s being slow and diligent, maintaining the veneer of courtly politeness, but it’s agony all the same because McCoy knows where the story’s headed: to the intersection of what McCoy wants and Pike wants, and the surety of who was more likely to get it in the end.

“It was pure chance, sir,” McCoys, testing a defense. “If I hadn’t met Kirk that day, I doubt we would have met at all.”

“I disagree,” Pike says with another of his pleasant, damning smiles. “I think you were bound to find each other, one way or another.”

+++++

McCoy arrives at Kolshari’s 10 minutes early, enough time to observe that it’s not a bad place to die. It’s got less of the ugly, ornate Imperial decor than a lot of places in the Heights, and there are no fights in progress or Orion women dancing in cages, which is a plus.

McCoy makes his way past the bar to the dim back section where dark shapes cluster around candlelit tables. The air is warm and thick with perfume, and the quiet is punctuated by the occasional burst of laughter or moan.

The host looks suspicious when McCoy mentions Kirk’s name, but when McCoy places his finger on the guy’s PADD to verify his identity, it dings in approval.

Kirk’s table is in the very back, close to the exit and with a good view of the door. Kirk himself is sitting at ease on a low sofa, knees splayed, arm resting on the back, wearing dark civvies that blend into his surroundings. He carries his height and slimness with grace and an understated pride that’s rare in an Imperial Court full of burly arms and heaving bosoms.

And then, of course, there are those eyes. They slide toward McCoy in bare acknowledgement of his arrival, and Kirk jerks his head a little to the left, indicating that McCoy should sit down. He does, a calculated distance, not too close and not too far away.

“T’Vann owes me 50 credits. She said you wouldn’t show.”

McCoy shrugs. “I figured that if you wanted to kill me, it wouldn’t matter where I was, but if you really wanted to buy me a drink...well, I wouldn’t mind that drink.”

Kirk nods slightly as if McCoy has passed a test and gestures for the waiter.

“Bottle of Game Cock and two glasses.”

If Kirk didn’t have McCoy’s full attention already, that would have gotten it. He expected Kirk to know his full name, maybe even where he’s from, but the name of his favorite bourbon is a nice touch.

“You don’t strike me as a bourbon drinker,” McCoy says. In fact there’s nothing about Kirk that ties him to any particular place, or even any class, now that he’s out of uniform. The bottle arrives and Kirk sloshes a few fingers into each glass, clinks them in a toast to McCoy doesn’t know what.

“Yeah, well. I didn’t have Aunt Lida to mold my tastes in the right direction.” Now McCoy’s eyes widen a little. He knows there’s no information that can’t be bought for a price, but wonders why Kirk would pay to find out the name of the woman who raised him. If it’s to intimidate him, it doesn’t work; there’s no one left in the world whose life is valuable to McCoy except his own, and that’s been an iffy proposition since the day he joined the Fleet.

So McCoy just gives a little snort of amusement and lets the first-class bourbon roll over his tongue. The corner of Kirk’s mouth hitches up into something close to a smile.

“What I can’t figure out,” Kirk says, as if they’d been having a conversation. “Is why the fuck you joined the Fleet in the first place.”

“Press gangs were after me. I figured I’d get a better deal if I went in voluntarily.”

“And so you signed up for the Imperial Academy?” Kirk laughs, not a bitter, ironic laugh but the kind that makes the corners of his eyes crinkle. “You have the most fucked-up sense of self-preservation I’ve ever seen. Do you know who set the gangs after you?”

“I have a pretty good idea.”

Kirk nods, as if he knows the story about McCoy’s ex-wife and his rabid pack of in-laws. “You’ll have to tell me about it some time.”

McCoy’s mouth goes a little dry at that; it’s intimate, much more so than if Kirk had made an actual pass. He cocks his head in surprise, trying to read Kirk’s opaque face. It’s the first time in six months in this rotten-at-heart city that anyone’s expressed a personal interest in him, and he’ll be damned if he knows why it should be Kirk.

“I will,” McCoy says. “If you want.”

Kirk just nods absently and glances away, eyes following a woman in a short silver dress who’s walking out, but his hand moves to rest on McCoy’s thigh, and McCoy can feel his flesh heat underneath it.

The sexual economy of the Academy being byzantine at best and poisonous at worst, the only sex McCoy has had since coming to San Francisco has been what he can buy, which hasn’t been much in either quantity or quality. But it isn’t sex that McCoy’s been craving. Kirk’s got him half-seduced by taking an interest, and the other half by sliding his long fingers up and down the inseam of McCoy’s trousers like he’s trying, very slowly, to light a fire.

McCoy feels his balls tighten, his body racing ahead of his brain. Kirk is reading him like a backlit PADD, watching the effect his touch has on McCoy’s breathing, the way he’s shifting as his trousers seem to shrink a size. Kirk’s watching McCoy watching him, watching the way the sharp point of Kirk’s tongue darts out across his lower lip, leaving it glistening.

McCoy’s used to people--especially people like Kirk--taking what they want as soon as they know they can get it. Kirk’s treating him like an equal, letting him make up his own mind, and McCoy’s mind and body both approve.

To show his approval, he picks up Kirk’s hand and moves it slightly to the left, so that it rests on his groin.

Kirk breaks into a smile that could slaughter thousands. He turns away to grab the edge of the velvet privacy curtain and draws it around the little booth. It must be noise-cancelling, because suddenly McCoy can hear his own pulse in his ears.

“You have five seconds to finish that drink,” Kirk says.

Without hesitation, McCoy slams it down and then Kirk’s half on top of him, hand wrapped around the outline of his dick, lips and teeth buried in his neck.

Kirk’s body is curiously light; McCoy feels like he could push him off if he wanted to, which he doesn’t, never minding the fact that Kirk is probably a walking encyclopedia of hand-to-hand combat tricks. But in this form of engagement, at least, McCoy is an even match. He shoves a hand up the hem of Kirk’s shirt to stroke the warm flesh of his waist and brush across his flat belly, and with the other he cups Kirk’s ass, a flyboy dream, round and taut under the pressure of his fingers.

Kirk is above him, a hard male weight, breathing into his ear, whispering hot, nasty things as McCoy’s senses fill with cologne and candle wax and the music of his own blood pounding in his ears. He threads a hand through Kirk’s short hair and pulls his head down, craving the taste of his mouth.

Kirk pulls back, just an inch or two, and puts a warning finger against his lips.

“No kissing.”

McCoy gives a little groan of disappointment, but his body’s already moving on, as Kirk tightens his grip on McCoy’s crotch and presses up, increasing the pressure almost to the point of pain. It feels wonderful.

“Enough, enough,” McCoy gasps. “I’ll come if you keep doing that.”

“Might as well get the first one out of the way,” Kirk says. He replaces his hand with his knee, uses his free fingers to open McCoy’s shirt, bare his chest, and roll his nipples between his thumb and forefingers while he leans forward and, delicately and precisely, bites McCoy’s earlobe with sharp teeth as he presses up into McCoy’s groin.

McCoy comes with his whole body, every muscle and nerve in on the action. There’s nothing left over for him to make a sound, so he rides it for long moments as Kirk milks him with a hand against damp wool.

When he opens his eyes, Kirk is standing above him, and McCoy is feeling both massively satisfied and faintly embarrassed, even though it’s clear that he’s done what Kirk wanted him to do. McCoy looks down at his ruined trousers and open shirt and imagines his red face and sweaty forehead.

“I must look like an idiot.”

“No,” Kirk says, brushing the stray hair back from McCoy’s forehead. “You really don’t.”

With Kirk’s groin at eye level, it’s impossible not to notice that he’s hard.

“So, uh,” McCoy says, making a gesture toward his fly. “Do you want me to--?”

“Smooth,” Kirk says with a laugh. “You know, you’re hotter when you keep your mouth shut. But no, thanks.”

“You sure?” McCoy reaches toward Kirk’s groin again, narcotized brain wondering why Kirk is being coy.

Kirk grabs his wrist and bends it away, hard enough to hurt.

“I said no. No cocks, no fucking.”

“No  _cocks_?” McCoy is baffled. “But isn’t that kind of the point? Besides, you just--”

“No kissing, no touching bare skin below the waist,” Kirk says tightly, as if he’s a squadron leader rattling off the rules for a drill. “No blow jobs and no fucking.”

“Okay,” McCoy says slowly, wondering exactly what weird-ass shit he’s gotten himself into. It sounds deeply perverted, but he can’t figure out how.

“You’ve got an apartment?” Kirk’s voice continues in that tight monotone, as if he’s angry and trying not to let it show.

“Yeah,” McCoy says before he can wonder if he should say no.

“Then we go back there. We fool around some more, and I come on you.” It’s a proposal spoken like a declarative. Kirk’s eyes give away nothing, but there’s a brittle hardness in his voice. “I’ll make sure it’s good for you,” he adds after a few painful moments of silence.

McCoy cringes a little inwardly. It might be the endorphins, but McCoy wants to remove the pressure, whatever it is, bring back the easy, smiling Kirk of a half hour before.

“I’d like that,” McCoy says, like it’s a natural and tempting proposition. “My place is a one-room shithole, but you probably guessed that already.”

Kirk relaxes fractionally, and the smile begins to creep back. “If it’s got a bed and less than one roach per meter, it’ll do.”

“I haven’t counted them lately,” McCoy says, and lets Kirk put a hand on the small of his back and pilot him out of the bar and into the chilly night.

Usually, McCoy wouldn’t walk anywhere in the city at night without a well-armed group, but Kirk is an effective deterrent, even with his skinny profile and baby face, his hands shoved into his pockets. It’s in the way he carries himself, the way he processes his surroundings, the strangely proprietary way he looks at McCoy. It’s something way beyond the knee-jerk belligerence that surrounds McCoy from hour to hour, and it pulls him onward, even as the sensible parts of McCoy’s brain tell him he should back away.

In McCoy’s apartment, in McCoy’s hard old bed, Kirk does just what he promised. They strip down to their shorts and Kirk shows him just how many things can be done with lips and tongues and skin. McCoy comes again with his groin pressed into a pillow, cotton-clad ass in the air while Kirk dry-humps him. Then Kirk flips him over, strips off his own shorts, and straddles him, working his own pale, splendid cock until he comes all over McCoy’s chest as if daring him to prove it isn’t a victory.

Afterward, when they’re lounging in bed and eating leftovers from McCoy’s tiny refrigerator, McCoy asks, “Is this because of him? Because of Pike?”

Kirk looks at him blankly, takes the container of food out of McCoy’s hand, and then slaps him, hard, across the face. McCoy, cheek stinging, is too stunned to do anything but stare.

“That’s so you remember,” Kirk says matter-of-factly. “As far as you’re concerned, he doesn’t exist, and as far as  _he’_ s concerned, you don’t either. You’re not a secret; I don’t keep any secrets from him. But believe me, you’ll be happier if you put him out of your mind. It is what it is. If it’s not enough for you, you can walk away. I mean that; any time.”

+++++

“Did Jim ever tell you the exact terms of our arrangement, McCoy?” Pike has a way of angling his head that makes it seem like he’s trying to look into McCoy’s brain, not just his eyes.

McCoy’s tried his damnedest to lead the conversation away from that topic of what he and Kirk did or didn’t do, in that bedroom or any bedroom, but Pike keeps steering it back.

“Or how much of it was voluntary on his part?” he presses.

This is a twist that McCoy hadn’t anticipated. It had been easy to view Pike as the the unseen hand keeping him and Kirk from doing what every neuron in their body was telling them to do. The thought that Kirk might have helped design his own prison is unexpected, but given what he knows now about his own capacity for submission, it hardly seems impossible.

+++++

With Kirk as his semi-lover, McCoy’s life gets both easier and more complicated. Kirk’s inner circle consists of the best, the most influential, and the most ruthless, and they accept McCoy because Kirk gives them no choice. McCoy wonders if they assume Kirk’s fucking him, or if they even know about Kirk’s strange operating instructions. There are plenty of distractions to keep McCoy away from his coursework, yet mysteriously his grades improve. On the next live-fire drill, he’s paired with Kirk, and they win. He receives the Double Eagle as a public mark of favor from Kirk while Qazi glares at him, not daring to mutter her suspicions.

None of Kirk’s cronies appear in the bedroom. Instead, it’s a colorful, revolving cast of high-class professionals and Court hangers-on. Under Kirk’s direction, McCoy couples with women and men, sometimes both at the same time, while Kirk watches, eyes bright and hot under half-closed lids, with only his own hand for company. He makes it look like this all he wants, like he’s another jaded, oversexed rich boy content for the moment with visual entertainment.

It’s only when they’re alone, grappling half-clothed until sweat trickles down the hollow of McCoy’s chest and his heart nearly bursts with frustration, that Kirk’s control flickers. Like most things with Kirk, it’s in his eyes, an echo of something he hates and fears.

McCoy tries to follow Kirk’s orders and put Pike out of his head, but he’s with them all the time, and McCoy begins to wonder if that’s the point. When he’s fucked around with Kirk to the point of climax but not of satisfaction, he can’t help wondering whether Pike keeps it for himself, if it’s a fucked-up power game or a tool of control or even a way to keep Kirk focused on the task at hand, the way trainers order their athletes not to screw anything the night before a big game. Sex comes as easily to Kirk as breathing and he insists on doing everything to perfection, so it’s a measure of his trust that he lets McCoy see what, even with the fancy trappings, amounts to constant failure.

One night, when the carnival’s moved on and it’s just Kirk and McCoy lying on sweat-damp pillows, McCoy’s head resting on Kirk’s chest, he dares a question.

“Why?”

Kirk glances down at him from beneath dark eyelashes. “Because some day, I’m going to be captain of the  _Enterprise_.”

It seems like either the wrong answer or the wrong question, but McCoy doesn’t say anything, just waits.

“Pike’s going to get the  _Enterprise_  first,” Kirk continues. This much even McCoy, with his hopeless ear for gossip, knows. “I’ll be helmsman. Spock will be first officer, to prevent assassination--not by me, but by any of Pike’s enemies, or my friends. When Pike’s promoted, assuming we both live that long, I’ll become captain.”

“Couldn’t you anyway?” McCoy says, “by killing Pike and Spock?”

Kirk grins at McCoy like he’s a precocious child. “And then what? Spend the next five years sleeping with a dagger under my pillow until I’m murdered in turn?” He reaches out a lazy hand to comb through McCoy’s hair. “When he’s in charge of the fleet and I have the  _Enterprise_ , we’ll have something that nobody’s ever had in the Empire. Political control is meaningless without the firepower to enforce it. The  _Enterprise_  will be the greatest single weapon in the galaxy, but it’s not ultimately the captain who controls her.”

“But if Pike is Grand Admiral of the Fleet--”

“No one will be able to stop us.”

The  _us_  cuts into McCoy with a sharpness that surprises him. There’s not a cadet at the Academy (save McCoy himself, perhaps) who doesn’t have fantasies of Imperial conquest, but McCoy  _believes_  Kirk’s. It’s rational and achievable and he knows that nothing short of death will prevent either Pike or Kirk from carrying it out. And McCoy is not part of  _us_.

“And you,” Kirk says, as if he’s overheard McCoy’s thoughts, “you’ll be CMO.”

McCoy has to laugh at that. “Oh, yeah? And preside over a flying torture chamber full of cut-rate assassins and drunks?”

“No,” Kirk says, looking almost annoyed. “You’ll be able to run it the way you want. What would be the point of having you otherwise? I want only the best on my ship.”

“ _Your_  ship?”

Kirk gives him a sharp, wary look, as if he’s revealed to much, or is getting tired of McCoy’s backtalk.

“ _Our_  ship,” Kirk says, and it’s punishment enough.

+++++

“He told me about you after the first night, you know,” Pike says. McCoy doesn’t know; he doesn’t know anything anymore, including how long he’s been in Pike’s quarters, letting Pike rake through the coals of his past.

McCoy has nothing to say, so he keeps listening.

“He told me I should put you on the  _Enterprise,_  make you CMO. I might have right away, except Puri’s brother-in-law is the Emperor’s second cousin. It was funny; he was going on about your medical skills and how you weren’t a sniveling drunkard like half the doctors in the Fleet. And I could see that his lips were swollen, and that there were bite marks on his neck.” Pike seems almost affectionate in the retelling. “You must be good, McCoy, because you had him dazzled. He said he’d never met anyone like you.”

Pike rises and stretches, taking a short turn around the room. “Excuse me,” he says. “I get stiff if I stay sitting for too long. Old injuries, I guess, or maybe just old age.” When he circles around behind McCoy’s chair, where McCoy can’t see him, the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

“What I can’t figure out,” Pike continues, “is why you wouldn’t make the most of it. You had Jim Kirk wrapped around your little finger, promising you the stars, asking nothing in return but--well, I’ll spare your blushes, McCoy. Maybe you were just too pure or notice? Or maybe you weren’t getting everything you wanted after all?”

Pike waits for an answer, so McCoy moistens his dry lips with his tongue and says, “I’d tell you if I knew, sir, but I’ve always been a piss-poor judge of what’s best for me.”

+++++

It’s an ordinary evening in Kirk’s dorm room--at least, the one that’s officially his but that he clearly doesn’t live in. They’re sprawled on the small bed, Kirk hacking away on some fiendishly complicated computer program and McCoy studying for a xenobiology exam given by the Academy’s worst and most belligerent instructor.

McCoy looks at Kirk’s face, at the dense eyebrows knit together in concentration, the full lips slightly parted, the body lax against the pillows, his whole posture free of the tightly coiled potential energy that define Kirk everywhere else. Kirk’s relaxation--what McCoy is tempted to call trust--hasn’t happened overnight, but has been slowly won, day after day, at considerable cost to himself, and still McCoy feels no closer to getting what he wants. It isn’t just sex, but that would be a start.

As he watches Kirk from beneath his half-closed eyelids, something that’s been flapping around his addled brain for weeks finally comes in for a landing.

“I can’t do this anymore.”

“So, time to have Professor Altair killed,” Kirk says, fingers still flying over his keyboard. “I can get you the name of a good assassin.”

“No, I mean  _this_.” He doesn’t, can’t say  _us_ , but he gestures around.

“Are you fucking someone?” Kirk asks with mild curiosity. “I told you, I don’t care.”

“No.”

“Then am I  _boring_  you?” There’s a hint of warning that McCoy doesn’t heed; for better or worse, he’s always had the strength of his most suicidal convictions.

“No. These last couple of months have been--” McCoy searches for a word that Kirk won’t find embarrassing, that reveals enough but not too much. “It’s the first time in a long time that anything’s made sense.”

“But?” He can see the muscles clenching in Kirk’s jaw, twitching in his forearms. He’s an overloaded warp core ready to blow.

“I only know one way to do things,” McCoy says. It’s a confession, not an excuse, and it’s the best way he can explain it. Kirk’s had the whole sorry story of his divorce, how he clung to Jocelyn with stupid faith against mounting evidence of her betrayal until he almost forced her to kill him. He assumes that’s the quality that Kirk values in him, but if he’s wrong, he could but just as dead, and for much less. “If I keep on with this--it’s getting to the point I can’t concentrate. I’m going to get myself killed. Or expelled, which is almost the same thing.”

“I see,” Kirk says, with a look that goes straight through McCoy to his heart. Kirk’s focus swivels back to his keypad and he resumes typing. “Get out.” Kirk’s voice is even and controlled.

“Jim--”

“Get your things and get out.” That quickly, McCoy has been consigned to the discard pile of things that no longer fit into Kirk’s plans.

McCoy nods, unregarded, and scoops his stuff into his backpack.

A damp, bone-chilling wind sweeps the Quad, and McCoy feels like he’s been cast into the outer darkness. If Kirk is as economically ruthless as McCoy thinks, he’ll go back to being what he was: a hick doctor with a 50% chance of surviving the Academy and no greater ambition than to be posted as a missing-limb-cauterizer to some remote Imperial garrison. If Kirk is vindictive--which, by McCoy’s calculus, would mean he’d actually cared--there’ll be retribution.

McCoy isn’t sure which he’s hoping for.

 +++++

  
A week goes by and he doesn’t even see Kirk and his entourage in passing; that’s how much and how quickly his social standing has sunk. Qazi does everything but stick her tongue out at him when he can’t find a project partner in Advanced Tactics and ends up with a dolt of a Viridian who barely speaks Standard.

After eight days, when Leonard’s finally stopped checking his comm every five minutes, he gets a message from Kirk that he’s borrowing a yacht for an all-day sail, with a wharf number and a departure time. McCoy thinks that drowning would be a charmingly old-fashioned way to get offed, but when the day comes there are a dozen guests, half of whom are new to Kirk’s circle, and Kirk playing the good host as they slice through the waters of San Francisco Bay under an iron-gray sky. To McCoy’s amazement it seems that he’s still hypothetical future CMO of the  _Enterprise,_  maybe even Kirk’s friend-of-record. But there are no more strange half-naked nights, no more glimpses into Kirk’s soul.

Two weeks later, Kirk shows up at the Emperor’s Birthday party with Carol Marcus on his arm, and McCoy is neither surprised nor jealous. Carol is an Imperial political spouse cut from whole cloth; canny, beautiful, ruthless, and no doubt wholly unconcerned with what Jim Kirk can give her emotionally or physically.

A few months later, when her pregnancy begins to show and rumors fly around campus that the Kirk is the father, McCoy even admires her tactics. It’s no doubt worth a few thousand credits in child support for Kirk to have this visible proof of his potency, even though McCoy is sure that if the baby is his, it’s only thanks to lab equipment.

In three full years at the Imperial Academy, McCoy sees Captain Pike exactly once, laying a wreath for the Imperial dead at a Commemoration Day ceremony. He could easily be Kirk’s father; he’s tall and handsome and blue eyed, and like Kirk’s father he’s fucked the boy up thoroughly while trying to save him. McCoy can’t hate him; he saves the hatred for himself, because after all, he hasn’t been able to do either for Jim, not fucking or saving, though it could be that by this point, Jim doesn’t need either one.

+++++

“You were in love with him,” Pike says, “and you couldn’t stand having less than all of him.”

It’s been years since McCoy has heard the word  _love_  said with anything other than contempt. It’s a weakness that the Empire has purged over ruthless centuries, and so McCoy, being prudent for once, says, “I wouldn’t know what that is.”

Pike laughs. “Jocelyn Treadway would say differently. Actually, she  _did_ say differently.”

McCoy raises his head. “You talked to her?”

“Oh, yes. We had a nice chat. It didn’t take much to get her to open up; you’re a favorite subject of hers still, it seems. Not everything she said was unflattering,” Pike adds with a sly smile.

“Really, sir.”

“She said you stuck with her, even when she made it clear she wanted you far away. Clay Treadway hadn’t just been biding his time; he’d been building up his power base, while you sat there all fat and happy in your little house with your little wife and waited for him to come and take everything. And eventually, he did.” Pike leans back, waiting to see if McCoy’s going to offer a rebuttal, but he doesn’t; how can he? It’s all factually correct, just missing the part where Jocelyn cried in his lap before packing his suitcase and sending him out into the night into the arms of an Imperial “recruiter.”

“I’m not one of those people who believes  _trust_  is a bad word,” Pike continues. “But the key is to trust the right people.”

+++++

The ship bucks and groans, the lights flicker, and there are answering cries of fear and pain from the injured, most of whom are convinced they’re going to die, either in the next five minutes when Nero finishes them off or more slowly under the harried incompetence of the medical staff. McCoy knows that Kirk won’t let the first thing happen and he’s planning to do something about the second, so he wishes they’d just shut up and let him concentrate on the man lying on his table.

Captain Pike is pale, bruised, dehydrated, and showing signs of torture, none of which would be a problem if it weren’t for that horrific thing wrapped around his spinal column. McCoy has no idea what it is, much less how to get rid of it, but he’s knows it’s not going to be pleasant for either one of them.

“Fifteen cc’s of anetrizine,” McCoy says to Ensign Avila, who’s standing a meter away with his arms folded, managing to look both surly and scared shitless.

“No anesthetic,” Pike rasps, not opening his eyes. “I need to stay awake.”

“Not while I operate on your spinal column, sir. That thing’s going to have to come out, and the longer we wait the more damage it’s going to do.”

“I said  _no_.” Even half-conscious, Pike is a scary son of a bitch. It takes some courage for McCoy to grab a hypo and open the meds cabinet. Still, the captain must be semi-delirious if he thinks anyone’s going to try an assassination attempt in the middle of a battle-to-the-death with Romulans.

“I’ll get it, doctor,” says Chapel, one of the other medics, taking the hypo out of his hands.  _That one’s a keeper_ , McCoy thinks, as if it’s a sure thing that the ship and the galaxy and his newly minted job as CMO are all going to be here in another few hours.

McCoy’s killed the little bugger with a laser and is planning the first incision when Kirk comes striding into the Medical Bay with more swagger than 36 sleepless hours of hell should really allow.

“Well?” Kirk asks without preamble.

“He’s stable, but I’ve got to that parasite out of him. That is, if you’re completely done shaking this tin can around.”

“Sorry,” Kirk says, as if he’s barely listening. He bends over Pike, frowning as he studies his face. “If you don’t get that thing out, will he die?” It occurs to McCoy that it’s the first time he’s seen Kirk and Pike together.

“No, but he’ll be paralyzed from the waist down.” Kirk gives him a sharp glance, and McCoy knows he doesn’t have to say more. A paralyzed captain will be worse than useless in the eyes of the Empire; he’ll be an embarrassment to be disposed of quickly.

“And the surgery?”

“Risky, but I think I can do it.” He looks down at Pike’s dreaming face, scarcely softer in repose, and gives a wry laugh. “Do you know, he wanted to stay awake for the whole thing? The last thing I need now is for him to move, or an audience.”

“He thought you were going to kill him,” Kirk says be way of explanation, and all McCoy can do is stare, because that’s how stupid he is--until that moment, the possibility hasn’t even occurred to him.

“Jim,” he says, voice almost a whisper, as if Pike could still hear him. “It would solve all our problems.”

“No,” Kirk says, hard and angry.

“You’re already captain, Jim,” McCoy says, a voice of temptation to himself as much as Kirk, feeling the awakening of a possessive impulse he’d thought dead since he walked out of Kirk’s dorm room. “You don’t need him; you’ve proved that.”

Kirk’s handsome face twists, and he grabs McCoy hard by the shoulder, dragging him away from the biobed. He whispers, low and harsh, eyes burning into McCoy’s. “Don’t you dare say that to me. You don’t  _know_. You have no idea what it was like at that mining colony, not for the 14-year-old son of two of the most hated people in the Empire. The average lifespan there was less than a year. Twenty straight hours of labor and then you had to fight for everything--your food, your bed, your safety. Fight or pay. Guess which one a skinny, pretty teenager ended up doing? Especially when there were plenty of family members of the  _Kelvin_  willing to visit a distant mining colony in search of a little revenge.”

The images that bloom in McCoy’s mind while he’s speaking cause his fists to clench. Kirk’s never said a word about his life before Pike, and very little about his life with him, but McCoy thinks he finally understands. In Jim Kirk, Pike’s found the exception to the laws of human nature and the universe. He’s found  _loyalty_ , and nothing, maybe not even death, will break it.

“All right,” McCoy says, defeated. “Let me go. I’ll do what you want.”

And McCoy does for 10 grueling hours as the  _Enterprise_ limps home. Kirk doesn’t leave; he stays beside the biobed, watching McCoy work through red-rimmed eyes.

McCoy saves Pike’s life and legs, but there’s nothing much he can do to speed the natural healing process, which means a few months of rest where Pike has to hide himself away from the Court for all but the most significant occasions. It may be for this reason that Pike orders McCoy punished for disobeying orders while he’s still on the ship, barely ambulatory.

Ten minutes in the Agony Booth is nothing by Fleet standards but it’s more than McCoy’s ever had to bear, and he’s scared and humiliated by the prospect of Pike witnessing it. It figures that this is the first time they should stand eye-to-eye, Pike wobbling defiantly on crutches, over his doctor’s objection.

“Nobody’s above the rules, McCoy,” Pike says. “By the way, the Acting Captain agrees with me.”

There’s enough of a personalized _fuck you_  in that last sentence that McCoy thinks Pike has tipped his hand. Making an example of McCoy helps no one; half the Fleet is dead and the other half likely jockeying for their positions already, so that the punishment of an uppity doctor is the last thing on anyone’s mind.

Except Pike’s, apparently.

It’s foolish to prod Pike, who may be injured and brittle but is still insanely powerful and, for all McCoy knows, as prone to indulging in petty revenge as anyone who makes it to high command in the Fleet. Still, if he’s going in the Booth anyway, he’d like to have something to show for it.

On impulse, he pulls from his pocket the silver Double Eagle that Jim gave him years go, which he’s been carrying as some sort of talisman.

He hands it to Pike, who rolls it in his palm. He gives McCoy a discerning look, as if reevaluating an enemy.

Then he gives a curt laugh and nods to the guards to let McCoy go.

“Hope you don’t wish you’d saved this for something bigger, McCoy,” he says, before turning his back on him and walking out. McCoy doesn’t bother to salute, but listens to the sound of the crutches as Pike makes his way painfully down the corridor.

+++++

Penkala is an unlikely place to die: a piss-ant little quasi-desert planet where dull, buff-colored Humanoids scratch out a miserable existence between raging solar storms. The storms produce spectacular auroras but make wave-based communications, not to mention transporter usage, difficult if not impossible.

This is exactly why the Imperial delegation has arrived in a couple of shuttles for a routine shakedown for tribute, and why, when an unexpectedly large and well-armed Penkalan delegation arrives to meet them, in turns into a problem that can’t be solved with hand phasers. The unofficial Fleet motto E _veryone for themselves_  is definitely in effect; Kirk grabs a fistful of McCoy’s shirt and and drags McCoy down a side alley, darting into a small, hut-like house to terrorize its residents out of a couple of sets of robes to conceal their uniforms.

Now there’s less than an hour left before the  _Enterprise_  is supposed to unleash death from above on the Penkalan capital, and Kirk and McCoy have fled to a farm a few kilometers beyond the outskirts of the city, as far as they dare to go into the burning, killing desert and maybe, maybe beyond the reach of a 15-kiloton photon torpedo.

The farm has a deep root cellar, as they find out when Kirk ejects the terrified family hiding inside. It’s lit by the cool, blue bioluminescence of the fern-like plants that grow on its walls. The shade and dark feel good after the heat and noise and fear of the city, and if it’s a false sense of safety that eases McCoy’s heartbeat and dries the sweat on his brow, he doesn’t mind.

“You couldn’t have left  _Spock_  on the Bridge and had  _Sulu_  join the landing party?” McCoy asks as soon as they catch their breath.

“Oh, great, now I get to spend the last hour of my life listening to you nag.” Kirk aims a desultory kick at the cellar’s dirt walls. “I told you, Sulu had standing orders to fire whether we made it back or not. The Grand Admiral hates hostage situations.”

“Even though she has no intention of negotiating for anyone’s release.”

“Why, McCoy--keep talking like that and I’m going to start to question your commitment to the Empire’s military objectives.” It’s an old routine of theirs; McCoy doesn’t hide his disinterest in galactic conquest and Kirk pretends to be on the verge of denouncing him to the Secret Police. In point of fact, he’s left McCoy and his Sickbay in peace as promised and in exchange, McCoy keeps the seditious talk for when they’re alone.

“So,” McCoy says, with the same light sarcasm. “Do you think you’ll get a posthumous medal for this one? Because at the rate we’re going I don’t think you’ll be collecting it in person.”

“Fuck if I know,” Kirk says, scanning the electrified air with his communicator for the fiftieth time and getting static. “Only if Sulu’s doing his job, which means we’ll probably be fine.” Kirk locks the communicator into beacon mode and sets it on a little stump of a table. But McCoy knows that it’s a golden opportunity for Sulu to eliminate most of the Bridge crew in one shot, and it’s not one that the ambitious helmsman is likely to miss. Kirk’s slumped shoulders tell McCoy that he knows it, too.

“Oh, well,” McCoy says, “I’ve got not regrets, I guess.”

“Really?” Kirk asks, and steps closer. “You sure about that?” McCoy can feel the heat from his body in the slight chill, and Kirk’s eyes are a ghostly blue. He places a hand on the back of McCoy’s neck to steady him and a moment later Kirk’s lips are on his. McCoy’s imagined it so often before, more than he’s even imagined fucking, and it’s still better: full lips and a combative tongue and a slippery heat that’s so purely sexual McCoy is hard within seconds.

 _Kiss of death_ , McCoy thinks, and doesn’t care.

He kisses back with a ferocity that surprises them both. He wants to touch Kirk’s skin, all of it, to kiss him until he can’t talk. He opens Kirk’s robe and pushes it off his shoulders and it’s like a rocket’s ascent into the blue.

They get naked as fast as the tight space and wildly firing neurons will allow, and McCoy fills his hands with Kirk’s firm, pale flesh. He massages the tender curves of his ass, pinches the soft flesh of his inner thighs, sucks and bites at his nipples until Kirk is growling and tugging at his hair, pressing down on his shoulders until McCoy kneels, more than willing, in front of his spectacular cock.

McCoy is a human being but he’s also a doctor, and a cock should hold no special mystery, but Pike made Kirk’s into one, locked it away like a hidden treasure in Bluebeard’s Castle. When McCoy strokes his hand along it, once, twice, in pure anticipatory pleasure and then wraps his lips around it, it’s the purest victory he’s ever known. Even victory in combat can’t taste this sweet to Kirk because it doesn’t have the feel of swollen, velvet flesh in his mouth, the musky smell of intimate places, the way Kirk’s knees buckle, ever so slightly, as he leans into McCoy and strokes his hair.

McCoy reaches down with his free hand to grasp his own cock and it’s like closing a circuit, no different than if it was Kirk’s hand on him, cock in his mouth, no different than if it were Kirk’s lips on his. They were made for this, it’s undeniable; in this little bubble universe where Pike doesn’t exist, McCoy can finally be sure. If only; if only Nero hadn’t come back in time, if only McCoy had finished the job with Pike, if only Kirk had more ordinary deceit in him. But then, that would be another universe, and they’d be different people, and while McCoy’s sure the attraction would still be there he can’t imagine it could ever be as good as it is in this moment.

Kirk comes in McCoy’s mouth with a shout, arching his back and and leaning on McCoy’s shoulders to stop himself from collapsing. McCoy sucks it all down greedily, wishing there were more. Kirk pulls McCoy to his feet and they cling to each other, trembling. He kisses McCoy deeply and without hesitation and finishes him with one hand while he massages his neck with the other, blunt, sure fingers imprinting onto every inch of McCoy’s skin.

When Spock finds them, a little more than an hour later, they’re fully clothed, but it wouldn’t take an inquisitor, much less a telepath, to figure out what’s been going on. Spock informs his captain that the shuttle  _Vlad_ is a hundred meters away and withdraws, his discretion more insinuating than anything he could have said.

“Are you going to tell him?” McCoy asks, unable to say the name but knowing Kirk will understand that he means Pike.

Kirk is standing in the shaft of sun and heat from the open trapdoor, lit up gold and green.

“Of course.”

“And what do you think he’ll do to us?”

Kirk claps him on the shoulder, familiar but not intimate, like he did back in the Academy before a drill he knew was likely to make McCoy puke.

“I don’t know.” He presses his lips together as a line appears on his usually untroubled forehead.

+++++

Pike tops off McCoy’s glass with fizzy water from an old-fashioned, silver-topped soda siphon. McCoy watches the bubbles rise, joyful, from the depths. He knows now, from experience, that proximity to death can make everything clearer. Even without Pike’s invasive coaching he could see it now, a steady trajectory toward personal destruction marked by moments of flaming happiness that never lasted long enough. According to what little personal philosophy McCoy possesses, that’s enough, but it doesn’t seem that way, not now, at the bitter end.

“I expected this day would come,” Pike says. “I just didn’t think it would be someone like you.” He’s amused and rueful, like a parent confronted with their kid’s first lover.

“Who, then?”

“The next captain of the  _Enterprise._  That’s the way of things, isn’t it? Children kill their parents, unless the parents kill them first.”

“Jim’s father didn’t,” McCoy hears himself saying.

“No, he didn’t,” Pike says. “And I’m not going to, either. Still, he’ll have to be punished. That’s the way things work.” McCoy goes cold at the word.

“Punished?” he repeats. Pike ignores him and rises to his feet, staring down at McCoy like a judge handing down a sentence.

“We’re done here for now, McCoy.” He takes McCoy’s glass from his unresisting hand. “I’ll see you at 2400, in the captain’s quarters. In the meantime, I’d like you stay in your own cabin and not communicate with anyone. My own guards will help you with that,” he says, as if he’s doing McCoy a favor. “Understood?”

“Yes, Admiral,” McCoy acutely aware that his hour of doom hasn’t passed, just been postponed.

+++++

The smirking guards accompany McCoy to Kirk’s quarters at what, on Earth, would be the stroke of midnight. He’s still in his stiff dress uniform and the worse for six hours of gut-churning anticipation.

The captain’s quarters on the  _Enterprise_  are both majestic and secure. McCoy’s surprised when the guards nod for him to proceed, alone, down the thick, blood-red carpet to the inner door.

It slides open with a whisper, and the first thing McCoy sees is Kirk, naked, his hands bound to a crossbar over his head, mouth gagged with a bronze admiral’s sash.

“Right on time, doctor.”

McCoy tears his eyes away to look at Pike, who’s standing beside Kirk fully dressed except for his missing sash, posture as easy as before, but eyes bright and alert, demanding attention.

McCoy’s shift in attention back to Kirk is an act of defiance, but he can stop himself from making a visual inventory: there are no marks on Kirk’s body and Pike’s agonizer is still clipped to his belt, though that doesn’t begin to cover the ways Kirk could have been damaged. When McCoy’s gaze finally settles on Kirk’s eyes, he finds them bulging and red-rimmed. He’s making muffled, desperate noises that are swallowed by the glittering fabric.

“What have you done to him?” McCoy whispers.

“In good time,” Pike says. He looks Kirk’s body up and down with proprietary interest, as if he’s an artwork that Pike is considering selling. Kirk is clearly making an effort to calm his breathing, and he’s succeeding until he meets Pike’s blue eyes, and whatever he sees there makes him struggle again.

“McCoy.” Pike places a hand on McCoy’s shoulder and bends toward him with friendly confidentiality, as if they aren’t inches from Kirk’s naked, sweating body. “Do you play cards?”

“Uh, yes, sir,” McCoy says, for a moment baffled beyond terror.

“Good. Because I’m going to give you a chance to get what you want--namely, me out of the picture.” He gives them both an encouraging smile, which is disconcerting to the point of nausea.

“Why in the world would you do that, sir?”

“Because you’ve ruined him, more or less. You taught him to want something new, something I can’t give him. He won’t disobey me, but he won’t give you up, either. Wanting you and abstaining isn’t a matter of discipline any more; it’s putting him at risk. Penkala proved that. If Spock hadn’t found you, you’d be buried under a meter of rubble with smiles on your faces.” He turns to Kirk, as if he’s part of the conversation. “ _Really_ , Jim? Is he really that good?”

“So what are you suggesting? That we settle this with a _card game_?” It has to be a setup, but he can’t think for what.

Pike gives an affable shrug. “Pistols at dawn would be more dramatic, but aren’t really an option. So here’s the proposal: we play a game of your choice. If you win, I turn Kirk over to you, with all the rights and privileges etcetera.”

“And if I lose?” McCoy asks, because Pike’s waiting for him to ask.

“You tell me,” Pike says, running a prideful hand down one of Kirk’s flanks. “What is this worth to you?”

“My life,” McCoy says without hesitation.

“No, too easy. Besides, I could have had that years ago. No, McCoy, you’re going to have to put something on the table that shows you understand the value of what I’m offering.” His touch on Kirk’s skin gentles to the slightest brush of fingertips. “That you’re worthy.”

The picture that forms with quick certainty in McCoy’s mind and makes his insides curl with fear. That’s how he knows it’s the right answer.

“If I lose,” McCoy says, “I’ll voluntarily consign myself to the beryllium mine on Argalon Seven.”

Pike nods in approval. “Very good. For how long?”

“Five years.” It’s the number of years he’s known Kirk. It’s also unsurvivable, and his only chance of escape would be if Pike died at someone other than Kirk’s hands.

“That work for you, Jim?” Pike asks. “You agree to the terms?”

Kirk’s eyes are shadowed and unfocused, but he bows his head in assent. Whatever hope McCoy had that Kirk might still, somehow, pull them out of this vanishes.

“Good,” Pike says, clasping his hands together so the joints pop. “Name your game, McCoy. I’m ready when you are.”

Pike drags out Jim’s folding card table and sets it courtside, underneath Kirk’s silent form and at eye level with his flaccid cock. McCoy has no idea how he’s going to be able to even sit still, let alone concentrate on a card game. When Pike produces a fresh deck and shoots his cuffs like a Vegas sharp, McCoy thinks of old stories about the Devil letting you play for your soul when you were already damned. His Aunt Lida told those stories because she believed in the Devil, and she believed in damnation; just two of many eccentricities that would have made her unsuitable for raising a child anywhere the rule of Empire held more influence.

“Name your game,” Pike says, tapping the deck on the table.

“Gin Rummy.”

Pike barks out a laugh. “You’re a hell of an entertaining guy, McCoy. They teach you that down South, along with cotillion and how to hunt raccoons? Well, I think I remember enough to muddle through. What do you say--standard rules, 25-point bonus for a knock or undercut, play to 100 points?”

“Whatever you say, admiral.” Lida had taught him to play Gin, on long summer evenings, out on the porch when the flies weren’t too bad. Wherever else he’s going tonight--Argalon Seven or Hell--he’ll never be going back to Georgia.

Pike directs McCoy to shuffle and cut the deck. McCoy watches Pike’s nimble hands to keep him honest and because the rest of the room is a bubbling cauldron of things that scare him shitless, from Pike eyes to Kirk’s bed to Kirk’s naked body to the black of space itself.

As he reaches for his cards, there’s a buzzing in his ears and a thudding anvil weight in his chest, and then McCoy’s overtaxed brain gives up and detaches. It’s a wonderful feeling, a weightless clarity, like the battle calm he’s heard Kirk describe.

He studies his cards for a moment and takes the upcard as a matter of course. It’s not a bad hand, with a run of three right off the bat.

“I spent a lot of time today asking you questions, McCoy,” Pike says, discarding a King. “Anything you want to ask me? Or say to me?”

What McCoy would like to say is that he hates people who talk while they’re trying to play cards, but he’s knows it’s a distraction tactic. It won’t work, because McCoy is a reasonable card counter, and because he’s riding his weird danger high. He feels like he can see through the backs of Pike’s cards, hear sounds on the other side of the ship. The only thing he can’t figure out is what’s going through Kirk’s brain, if there’s something he should be doing--arguing or fighting or knocking out Pike and heading for the nearest escape pod--anything other than let the fate of two human beings be decided by 52 beat-up pieces of cardboard.

“Since you mention it, sir,” McCoy says, picking up a well-timed 3 of Clubs from the discard pile, “Why did you pick Kirk in the first place?”

“Knew his parents. Fucked his mother, actually, if you’ll pardon the expression. It’s accurate, though; she never had any genuine interest in anyone besides George.” The game is moving fast; Pike keeps his eyes on his hand and picks up and discards with fluid confidence.

“And why was that?” McCoy figures that Kirk being pissed about his nosiness will be a manageable problem if and when they get themselves out of this.

“They were pretty much of a pair--brilliant, ambitious, passionate. And charismatic, oh boy.” Pike flicks a look at Kirk as if to say,  _chip off the old blocks_.

“I guess none of that helped when it came to the  _Narada_.” McCoy doesn’t know anything beyond what’s in the official histories, but he’s anxious to keep the conversation flowing.

“No, nothing would have. Maybe if they’d started the evacuation sooner...but that isn’t Imperial policy. Go down with the ship, or if that’s not an option, save the senior officers first.”

“So what was George Kirk supposed to do?” McCoy picks a card from the stock pile and realizes he’s close to Gin. “Let his wife and child die for the greater glory of the Empire?”

“Who gives a rat’s ass about the Empire?” Pike asks, shocking McCoy when he’d been feeling pretty unshockable. “No, he was supposed to  _save himself_. That’s what normal,  _rational_  people do. Altruism has no place in an efficient society, McCoy. Anybody who doesn’t understand that deserves what they get.”

And with that he raps once on the table, signifying he’s finished with his hand.

The light knock reverberates down McCoy’s spine. He’d been so focused on building his own hand that he lost track of Pike’s. In the final tally he’s able to limit the damage, but the computer notes all the same that Admiral Pike leads by 20 points, though not that Dr. McCoy is one-fifth of the way toward a very short career in mineral extraction.

McCoy and Pike split the next two games, McCoy keeping his mouth shut and his head in play, with the result that Pike still leads, but McCoy’s feeling more confident.

“But was it really altruism?” McCoy asks, as the next game begins. “What about the whole conspiracy theory about the Kirks planning to escape together with a fortune in dilithium, but George not getting out in time?”

Pike sniffs. “Cover story. The truth would have been impossible to explain.”

“The truth? You mean that he sacrificed himself for his wife and child?”

“Yes.” Pike meets his eyes over his cards. “That kind of weakness has no place in the Fleet, even among traitors.”

McCoy nods, but keeps his real opinion to himself.

The game stretches on and McCoy, lulled by the homely sociability of the back-and-forth, begins to wish he’d picked poker, especially when he knocks out and Pike undercuts him. Just that quickly, Pike’s got 68 points and McCoy’s got sweat breaking out on his upper lip. Consignment to Hell is seeming like a real possibility.

So he just deals again, and figures he might as well make the most of his remaining moments and Pike’s expansive mood.

“But you didn’t really answer-- _why Kirk_ , sir?”

“Good genes,” Pike says, with a smile and a sidewards glance. “A fine education in the quadrant’s best juvenile prisons and work houses. But mostly, it was  _him_. Seeing him. Talking to him. I took him for a test flight, you might say.”

“Ah.” Now McCoy’s doing everything in his power not to listen.

“Not the kind you’re thinking of, McCoy, though I won’t deny he was a very pretty boy. No, I took him up in a shuttle and showed him the stars. He’d only ever been in the secure hold of a cargo ship. When I showed him what it could be like, I knew he’d do anything,  _anything_  to taste that wonder again. That kind of desire’s different from the garden variety greed that drives the galaxy, McCoy. It’s rare, and you can do great things with it.”

With that, Pike lays down a 10 of Diamonds, and McCoy realizes that, out of all the cards in the deck, it’s the one that he needs. He picks it up with a trembling hand, check and rechecks, and then says, “Gin.”

Just like that, he’s back in the game. He ventures what he hopes is a reassuring glance in Kirk’s direction, but Kirk isn’t watching him.

“Very good, McCoy,” Pike says dryly. “Serves me right for indulging in nostalgia.”

McCoy gets up to pour himself a drink of water, feeling weird about making himself at home in the Captain’s quarters, but it’s a small indignity for Kirk compared to the larger ones he’s suffering.

Pike battles back, of course, and after another few games of less consequence it’s Pike with 82 points to McCoy’s 75. Gin or an undercut will put either of them over, and McCoy, who’s been getting steadily more stressed and brain-fogged, wishes the racing night would slow down.

“So you showed Jim the stars, and you figured he’d do anything to get them,” he says, before Pike deals again. “That kind of devotion, that...” He doesn’t say the word. “How was it any different from what brought down his father?”

“I didn’t say that it was.” Pike pauses for a moment, catches McCoy’s gaze and holds it, before he puts the deck down with light thump, such a soft sound for a death knell.

McCoy gulps, and nods. He understands it all now. It’s love that Pike’s talking about, the weakness of slaves and subject planets, the cant of ancient stories. Pike’s figured out a way to exploit it, to make it the engine of his ambition, and Kirk its fuel. It’s one thing when that love is directed at the starry night, at the great ship that carries him through it, but quite another if its object is a doctor with a love of Earth and quiet and a propensity to self-sacrifice.

If Pike kills McCoy now, Kirk will hate him. Since McCoy’s shown that he’d rather die than abandon Kirk, the remaining choice is to turn McCoy into something Kirk will have no use for. Argalon Seven will do that efficiently. A few weeks underground and he’ll be a hollow-eyed, shambling creature unworthy of love or even pity.

It changes nothing. He wasn’t lying when he told Kirk he had no regrets. Kirk would probably never have told him his particular truth; Pike didn’t want to, but here they are.

“Deal,” McCoy says, looking Pike hard and sharp in the eyes.

The game proceeds at an easy pace, neither fast nor slow. When Pike raps on the table, McCoy only jumps a little.

They lay their cards down and McCoy doesn’t bother to count, just stares into the middle distance and hopes the whole game is over, so that he can go right to bed or the brig or wherever Pike wants to send him and Kirk can be released. The night has already gone on much too long

“McCoy.” Pike snaps his fingers in McCoy’s face. “Hello, McCoy?”

“Sorry, sir.” He turns his focus back to the cards.

“McCoy, you have Gin.”

“What?” Now McCoy seems to be having trouble hearing.

“I was counting your deadwood for you, but--you don’t have any. You’ve been sitting on Gin for who knows how many rounds. Do you know what that means?”

McCoy just stares at him, not understanding.

“It means you win.” Pike throws his remaining cards on the table and flops back in his chair like a gambler who’s just gone bust.

“I win?” McCoy can hardly focus for the spots dancing in front of his eyes.

“Yes, McCoy.” Pike turns to look fully at Kirk, whose eyes are wide and alert, looking back at him. “I’ll miss you, Jim, but at least I know now that I’m leaving you in good hands.

Pike gets slowly to his feet, stretches, and points at Kirk’s gagged mouth but doesn’t touch him. “Can I have my sash back?”

“Oh, uh, sure.” McCoy, feeling like the Earth and stars have fallen on his head, stumbles to his feet and fumbles with the knot under two pairs of bright eyes. It yields, and Kirk spits and coughs. McCoy hands the sash to Pike with a sense of having completed some perverse ceremony, and watches in sick fascination as he wraps the saliva-dampened fabric around his waist.

PIke leans in to lay a hand against Kirk’s face.

“This isn’t goodbye, Jim, but it is farewell. I hope your new owner gets as much value out of you as I have.” He withdraws his hand with the ghost of a caress. “Don’t stay up too late, boys. There’s a senior staff meeting at 0800 and you know how I feel about tardiness.”

And with that, he turns his back on them both and walks out. McCoy’s eyes follow him until the door closes behind him with a whisper.

“Release cuffs and retract,” Kirk’s hoarse voice says behind him. McCoy turns around in time to see the crossbar vanish into the ceiling and Kirk’s arms fall to his sides. McCoy barely has time to register that little point of information when Kirk says “ _Ahh_ ” and hunches over, wincing with the pain of circulation returning to his shoulders.

“This part sucks,” he whispers, flexing his arms. When McCoy whips out his tricorder, Kirk bats it away. “Oh, just fucking  _don’t_. Get me some water, okay?”

McCoy does, and Kirk takes the glass in a wobbly hand and drains it. “Can I get you anything else?”

Kirk holds out the glass again. “Maybe something stronger?” When McCoy doesn’t take the glass, or move, he says,with exasperation, “ _What_?”

“After  _all that_ , you have nothing to say?” McCoy is starting to vibrate in reaction to everything that’s happened, and anger is as good an emotion as any to attach to it.

“Like what?” Kirk rasps. “I’ve got no more shocking revelations, if that’s what you want.”

“I thought maybe you’d like to say something about the fact that I won your freedom from at the possible cost of sending myself to that--place.”

Kirk gives him an  _oh, please_  look that’s no less effective for the fact that he’s naked. “Don’t flatter yourself. He was cheating the whole time.”

“ _Cheating_? And I beat him anyway?”

“Cheating so that  _you would win_. I could see his cards. That last hand, he fed you every card you needed and when you were too spaced to call Gin, he knocked out.” He sits down heavily on the edge of his bed. “Don’t tell him I told you, okay? I’m sure he had his reasons, but the last thing I want is for you to think you’re good at cards. In fact, you should never play again.”

McCoy sits down next to him, taking the load off his shaky legs. “I swear, the mind games you two play are way above my pay grade. For all I know this whole thing was contrived between you as some form of sick-ass entertainment. You know, make the funny little doctor’s life flash before his eyes--was that it?”

“Nope. I’ve never lied to you, you know. Well,” Kirk amends, cocking his head, “not about anything important. Here, I’ll show you how real it is.”

He turns his head, and McCoy is so conditioned to think of their mouths as mutually repellent objects that he almost jerks away. But Kirk’s lips are warm, maybe a little chafed from the rough treatment of the gag, and McCoy nips at them softly with his own, relying mostly on his tongue to say  _You son of a bitch_  and  _You’re going to drive me to an early grave_  and  _Yes_.

“You never asked him if he fucked me,” Kirk says somewhere between his chin and his ear.

“It wasn’t important.”

Kirk gives a gravelly chuckle that does weird things to McCoy’s nervous system. “You and your fucked-up priorities. Next thing you’ll be telling me you don’t care if I screw around or not.”

“I don’t, I really don’t. And this whole ‘ownership’ thing--” he puts a hand on Kirk’s neck to push him away, just far enough to look in his eyes, and when he strokes the tight tendon with his thumb, Kirk winces. “Hey,” he says, remembering. “Pike said he punished you. What did he do, Jim? You looked like death warmed over when I got here.”

“Oh, that.” Kirk gives a twisted half smile. “He told me that he’d killed you.”

McCoy feels something hard and tight in his throat. “And you believed him?”

“Yeah,” Kirk says. “I guess he had us both fooled.” He frowns, kicks the bed with the back of his heel, and then grabs McCoy’s hand, fast and tight. “I don’t understand a lot of this, McCoy. You’re going to have to explain.”

“Well, for one thing, sometimes it makes you stupid.” McCoy grips Kirk’s hand like it’s the only thing he’s got in the world.

“Yeah, I got that part,” Kirk says, nodding and squeezing back. “That’s why I said no cards.”

 


End file.
